NTU EEE students win 1st and 2nd placing at SG-India Hackathon

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NTU hosted the Singapore-India Hackathon from 12 – 14 November 2018. The hackathon ideas was proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister Ong Ye Kung during PM Modi’s recent visit to Singapore. This hackathon saw 20 teams from each country participate in a 36-hour challenge. PM Modi presented the prizes to the winning teams. The theme for the compeitition revolved around smart campus. NTU EEE’s IEM students VARICK LIM SHENG RUI, DHEA MARIESTA CHANJAYA and MANDY WONG won the 1st prize in the hackathon and share their experience.

How did your participation in the SG-India hackathon come-about?
"We received an email about the hackathon and initially, we were quite hesitant to join, as we were already swamped with school projects. However, we felt that it would be a good opportunity to apply the skills we have acquired in school. So we took the leap of faith and signed up."

What was your team’s idea/plan/concept and provide short description about the idea/plan/concept?
"As students, we faced the problem of getting good solutions for Past Year Papers. That gave us the idea to build a community driven QnA platform for students to discuss PYP solutions. Users can upvote answers they find helpful and contributors can earn points and badges for providing good answers."

Which other contestants’ concept were you impressed by? What did you learn about the Indian contingents’ concept?
"We were particularly impressed by the first place Indian team, who used Augmented Reality to provide indoor directions. In fact, many of the Indian teams used new or emerging technologies such as AI and Blockchain. Its fascinating how different kinds of technology can be used in the theme of Smart Campus."

What did you learn from this experience?
“The SG-India hackathon was truly an eye opening experience for us. We all had to pick up new frameworks and libraries, and apply them immediately. The tight deadline also taught us to prioritize our feature development."

"At the same time, we had take ourselves out of the engineer role and in the shoes of the users. Most of the discussions we had were actually about user experience. Like how can we enhance the learning process for the user, how can we provide better incentives for contributors, etc."

The hackathon was quite intimidating at first as there were many teams from other schools and universities. Despite that, we thoroughly enjoyed the process and we've learnt to not shy away from challenges."